This invention relates to electronic display of music, and more specifically, to display of music which can be downloaded from the Internet, and which electronically can be modified by a conductor and/or musician in an orchestra, band or other ensemble.
Electronic display stands have been proposed, which can advance musical notes without the interruption of a conductor and/or musician. U.S. Pat. No. 5,760,323, entitled NETWORKED ELECTRONIC MUSIC DISPLAY STANDS, by Romero et al., which is incorporated herein by reference, proposed an electronic display stand which can be controlled by remote mechanical actuation, the sound of musical notes, or a timed interval. Several of these devices can be networked to display music to several musicians.
The prior art does not teach a system which can download music from the Internet, and which allows modification or annotation by a conductor or musician. Also lacked in the prior art is a file system optimized for display of musical notes.
A general object of the invention is the electronic display of musical notes, which can be downloaded from the Internet and which can be annotated by musicians and conductor.
Another object of the invention is a common file system for displaying of musical notes.
According to the present invention, as embodied and broadly described herein, a system for displaying music is provided, comprising an Internet server, a computer, a plurality of viewers and a plurality of styluses. The Internet server stores the music in a FreeHand System (FHS) file format, or may store the music in another file format.
The computer has a computer processor and a computer memory. The computer accesses the Internet server and downloads a particular musical composition. The particular musical composition has a plurality of groups of music. If the particular musical composition is not in the FHS file format, then the computer translates the particular musical composition to the FHS file format. The particular musical composition is stored in the FHS file format, or other file format. Each group in the plurality of groups of music has a variation in the particular musical composition corresponding to a particular musical instrument. The computer stores, using the FHS file format, or other file format, the particular musical composition in the computer memory. The computer retrieves, from the computer memory, the particular musical composition stored with the FHS file format, or other file format, and stores music in the computer memory using the FHS file format, or other file format.
The plurality of groups of viewers are coupled to the computer. The plurality of groups of viewers may be coupled using wires or cables, or using radio waves. Each group of viewers has at least one viewer. The plurality of groups of viewers corresponds to the plurality of groups of music, respectively. The plurality of groups of viewers, displays the plurality of groups of music of the particular musical composition retrieved from a viewer memory. The computer may control display of the particular musical composition on each of the plurality of groups of viewers.
The plurality of styluses has a stylus located at each viewer within each group of the plurality of groups of viewers, respectively. Thus, each viewer has a stylus. Each stylus annotates, at a respective viewer, the respective particular musical composition with annotations. The plurality of styluses generates a plurality of annotations corresponding to the plurality of groups of viewers, respectively. A respective viewer stores in a viewer memory, the annotations made by the stylus at that viewer.
The computer stores the plurality of annotations as an annotated file, for later display with the particular musical composition. The computer also uploads the annotated file to the Internet server.
Additional objects and advantages of the invention are set forth in part in the description which follows, and in part are obvious from the description, or may be learned by practice of the invention. The objects and advantages of the invention also may be realized and attained by means of the instrumentalities and combinations particularly pointed out in the appended claims.